Captivating Bible Stories for Young People, Written in Simple Language

by Charlotte M. Yonge

VERY sad things were going on among the Jews. A great many of them were carried away out of their beautiful hilly land of Canaan, to live among the flat wet marshes round Babylon, and only a few were left with their king Zedekiah at Jerusalem.

Jeremiah was speaking God's words to the people of Jerusalem; Ezekiel was speaking God's words to the people who were captives by the river side. They both said the same thing—that the only way to be peaceful, and not to suffer worse and worse, would be to repent and leave off their sins that had displeased God, and pray to Him to spare them, and then to bear patiently the punishment that had begun. But this was just what Zedekiah and his people would not do.

They misused Jeremiah for giving them such advice, and they would not own the king of Babylon for their master; and instead of believing God's true prophets, they listened to the false ones, who said, that in a very little while the captives would come back again, and all would be well.

Then Ezekiel took a tile, a great flat piece of pottery, and he drew on it the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem, and made little tents and banks round it, and he lay down by it on his side, and watched it. And he weighed out for himself a very little bad bread to eat.

Then, when the people came to ask him why he did this, he said that it was to show them how it would be with their own Jerusalem far away. The Babylonians would come round it, and set up their tents, and make banks of earth to keep the people in, and shoot stones and arrows, and climb the walls. Inside there would be no better food than Ezekiel was eating—no, nor so good—and everyone would be starving, and dying of thirst.

Then the enemy would break in, and carry all the chief of them away to Babylon, and keep them prisoners there—till the whole people had come to repent of their sins, and had turned to the Lord with all their hearts.

For God has no pleasure in man's being punished. He only punishes that we may turn away from our sin and do right, and be saved at last. If only these Jews would have listened to Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and repented, they would have been spared; but instead of that, they went on growing worse and worse, till they had to have seventy long years of punishment before they could be forgiven.

We must take care when we are punished that we are sorry, and not obstinate and hard, or we shall have to be punished more and more.

QUESTIONS.